Hi,

So I need to buy an e-reader. I used to have a Pocketbook 622. It was a decent device with epub support, but had some caveats:

- had some trouble with djvu outlines and page numbers
- scrolling some PDFs with hw keys stuttered at times
- it used a proprietary format for the dictionaries, which could be converted only using a Windows binary

What is a must:
- hardware keys for scrolling the pages
- e-ink/e-paper - I don't want an LCD/LED in any case

What is really nice to have
- epub support
- stardict dictionary support
- good PDF support (LaTeX documents are usually rendered to PDF, unfortunately)

Appreciated:
- hackable, root access, ssh, etc.

I have nothing against Android in this case. TBH, Android is a system designed perfectly for e-readers, not mobile phones.

What would you suggest?

I'd suggest a Kindle 3. It has a HW keyboard, wifi, optional 3g, and an E-ink screen. It has great PDF support; it does not natively support epub but you can freely convert epub to .mobi using Calibre. It has been rooted; using custom software you can do things like access the microphone (which is installed but the native OS doesn't actually use) or run a terminal for ssh etc.

If the hardware keys were in the "nice to have" section, I'd have written a bit about modding a tolino with a huge sd card and root because it's (old) android with adb enabled from factory, some models are easy to open and the system is just on a tiny micro sd inside.

As mentioned: No hardware keys, but a reasonable good touchscreen mostly insensitive to smudges/finger prints. FBreader runs OK, but memory is severely limited.

If someone is interested, I could write up some pros/cons and so on nonetheless.

I have a Kobo Touch n905c ereader. The 1000mAh battery last 8 days actually. It's been said it is possible turn it a debian tablet. When I got time I'll do the try.

-E-ink display

You can view books, documents, images, text files, and comic books on your Kobo eReader. Each have different file formats associated with them.

Books: EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, and MOBI
Documents: PDF
Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and TIFF
Text: TXT, HTML, and RTF
Comic Books: CBZ and CBR


-Hackable, you can turn into a debian tablet.

Hardware buttons:
Power slider – Turn your eReader on or off, or put it to sleep.
Home button – Press the Home button to go back to your Home screen.

other kobo ereaders

Kobo Aura ONE
The New Kobo Aura H2O
Kobo Aura H2O
Kobo Aura
Kobo Touch 2.0

Also this may be of interest for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme..._on_my_kindle/

https://github.com/DylanHamer/DebianKindle/tree/master

But I would prefer a reader which is more open from the start.
Kobo sounds like a good choice.
Although the runtime of a kindle may be great to have.

I have a Kobo Glo since 2 years and it works ok although pdf ebooks are sometimes hard to read as they seem not to scale/zoom properly.

I have Kobo Aura H2O and I can say I'm very satisfied with it.

I think the only missing thing from your list is hardware buttons, but I havent found that to be an issue during regular use - the touchscreen (which is actually not capacitive but infrared) works just fine and just can page either by taping areas on the screen or by a left/right gesture over the screen. Also nice touch that you can change intensity of the (superb!) built in frontlight by a up/down swipe near the left edge - many other devices required you activating and using an awkward menu for this.

The device is also dust and water proof, which could be pretty handy in some scenarios. There is also a slot for a uSD card (under a water-tigh cover) which is a must if you read any mangas/comic books or have scanned PDFs, etc.

The default reader software works well and doesn't get in the way - and there is a very nice plugins for Calibre that makes it easy to manage what books you have on the device and can even create book collections visible in the Reader UI for you.

As for custom development, the Kobo platform is pretty open and there is even a complete reader replacement, called Koreader, that has some pretty advanced features, like support of sending books and book metadata (reading state) directly between readers on the same network, providing access to the device to Calibre over network and other features. I haven't really got to try Koreader out myself though.

The overall community developer community seems to be concentrated at Mobileread and looks pretty active.

Thanks a lot for the many suggestions.

I found some kind of budget options which seems legit to me. It seems to have hardware buttons on the edges, runs Android 4.2.2, has both Adobe Reader and FBReader by default. Some article said that the default dictionary app support stardict.

What do you think?

/edit: thanks to maegon9y00 for pointing that I accidentally not posted the name of the device: it's InkBoonk Classic 2

Could you tell us what device you found?

Oh, I removed the name while editing

InkBook Classic 2